While what’s going on in Honduras might be far from the hearts and
minds of most people in Marblehead, most people are not Linda Weltner.

The outspoken Marblehead resident is bringing the country’s fight to
her hometown, having recently visited the Central American nation as
part of a self-funded human-rights delegation organized through Witness
for Peace, a D.C.-based grassroots non-profit organization, which
attempts to influence U.S. Latin-American policy through education.

Speaking in front of a small group gathered at the Unitarian
Universalist Church of Marblehead Oct. 7, Weltner described a
deteriorating human-rights situation in the country following the June
28 armed ousting of President Manuel Zelaya.

Wearing a red bandana tied over her shoulders and a
Spanish-inscribed T-shirt, which, translated, read “Movement for
Dignity and Justice,” Weltner also had a lot to say about the coup and
what she considers to be a wealth of misinformation surrounding it. Her
source of information, she explained, was a coup government official
she met on her trip, who was also secretly working as part of the
resistance.

Her first major point was that the coup was not legal — as the
opposition party alleges. Further, Zelaya’s critics have argued that he
wanted to extend illegally his four-year term in office, which Weltner
said is not necessarily true.

On the morning of June 28, Zelaya had scheduled what the official
explained as a legal, non-binding poll of public opinion to see if
there would be popular support for a referendum in November to call a
broad-based National Constitutional Assembly to write a new
constitution.

Weltner said Zelaya’s actions were entirely legal.

The opposition, she said, makes claims that the coup was in fact a “constitutional transition.” Weltner begs to differ.

“Clearly this was an illegal military coup, and everyone in Honduras knows that,” Weltner said.

Weltner explained she thinks it’s the National Assembly that is running the country, not the president.

“The National Congress is overwhelmingly white and very wealthy,”
Weltner said. “And when they finally got around to voting Micheletti
president, the six pro-Zelaya members were conveniently not present.”

Her description of the National Assembly is one of a corrupt organization.

Going a step further, she explained that she thinks the opposition’s
charges against Zelaya (including charges of critics outside the
country) — that he is under Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s tutelage
— are unfounded and belie what is really going on.

On that point, Weltner ripped into the media coverage of the Honduran coup.

Reading excerpts from esteemed publications like the Washington Post
and the New York Times, Weltner pointed out misconstrued facts that she
thinks were misreported due to corporate interests.

But more alarming were Weltner’s reports of human-rights abuses in
the country. Since taking over the government, the newly instated
Honduran leader Micheletti has reportedly shuttered independently owned
media outlets, and under his leadership, freedom of assembly has been
restricted.

Amnesty International reported in September scores of deaths due to police beatings or shootings during protests in the region.

On her trip, Weltner met with several members of the resistance, who
described to her the atrocities committed at the hands of their new
government leaders. Beatings, rapes and disappearances are becoming
commonplace, she said. Wiretapping and illegal curfews have become the
norm.

“Their police are against them, their country is against them, they have no one to turn to,” Weltner said.

In fact, while attending a protest, Weltner said she had her own
scare. A gentleman whom she described as good-looking approached her
group and said that a bomb would be placed in their airplane on their
flight home.

“It was creepy,” Weltner remembered.

Again, Weltner criticized the U.S. for not making such stories
public. She described her meeting with a young U.S. Embassy worker in
Honduras who said he hadn’t publicized most of the abuse stories
because he needed verification — “not anecdotes.”

On top of that, Weltner believes the State Department and Congress
funded and advised Honduran forces that participated in the coup, again
and again coming back to the role she thinks politics played in the
events.

Whatever the cause might have been, however, according to Weltner, the situation for Hondurans is only getting worse.

While Honduras will hold a presidential election at the end of
November, during which neither Zelaya nor Micheletti will be allowed to
run, parties from both the Micheletti camp and the resistance continue
to butt heads on a day-to-day basis, according to published reports.

After her talk, Weltner said her stake in the affair comes from her
longstanding love of Latin America and its people. A Boston Globe
columnist for 19 years, Weltner now teaches classes in the Explorers
Lifelong Learning Institute at Salem State College, the next of which
will cover Bolivia. During her travels, she has been to Cuba,
Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Belize — the list goes on.

“I’ve just fallen in love with the whole Latin American culture… I just care what happens to them,” Weltner said.

She hopes her talks inspire people to find out what she considers the truth behind the political events of today.

“I think we have to get over the idea that the U.S. is a purely
benevolent country so that we can understand why 9-11 happened,”
Weltner said. “If we don’t learn the truth, then the world becomes in a
state of confusion, and we become manipulated by leaders who have an
agenda.”